"Lucidchart is the best free learning tool you’ve never heard of. It’s an online diagramming tool that’s easy to use and supported by a for-profit company, so you don’t have to worry about us disappearing once you’ve built your lesson plans around us.

Not sure how to use a diagramming program in your classroom? Here are 10 ideas from teachers and professors who are already using Lucidchart."

A great introduction to Lucidchart, a robust online graphic organizer that is free for educators (and their students) and allows students to collaborate on projects. A few of the ideas suggested in the post are below:

* Use Lucidchart as an alternative to Think, Pair, Share

* Brainstorm with mindmaps (and have students collaborate, having each choose a different color if you want to follow them individually)

* Real time feedback on assignments

Remember, this is a free tool and the post provides great directions on how to set up your account and request it be upgraded to educational!

This is a tool that I hope to share at our annual teachers tech conference. I will try it our next week with my seminar students as we continue to model ways to use technology to enhance instruction. I want to see how teachers react to this as a part of their professional learning.

I re-scooped this from Nik Peachey, and trialled this game for making quizzes and seems like a nice tool. I also like that you could link to a ThingLink page or a blog. Lots of potential to "gamify" a lesson.

Within a lesson instead of making a questionnaire for students I would get every student to make a short quiz of 10 questions relating to what they have just learnt, the options from there are endless, but culminating all the quiz questions (but removing similar questions) would allow learners to get a holistic idea of the learning objectives. Also it would be interesting to get the students to pose one bonus question from there own research to go into a group quiz that could be done collaboratively in an open forum, therefore the question designer can also provide insight effectively leading the class.

Here is a great idea to provide differentiation in homework. The Heat-ometer provides four levels, from mild (not shown in the image above) to medium (also not shown) to hot and extra hot. each level is more complex than the previous level, and 3 options are provided for each level.

The designer of this image also provides links to the original design, which is located at Take Away Homework.

Am anxiously awaiting for a response from them; I want this tool! A cloud-based, easy to use animated video making app...drag 'n drop! Although not out yet, I have signed up for it.....more exciting than Iphone 6!!!!!

"Over a decade ago, cognitive scientists John D. Bransford and Daniel J. Schwartz asked fifth graders and college students to create a recovery plan to to protect bald eagles from extinction. Surprisingly, the two groups came up with plans of similar quality (although the college students had better spelling skills)."

As long as the questions do not circle back to one right answer then critical thinking is used. Too often, questioning is brought back to the one right answer rather than exploring the questions from the many perspectives in the classroom.

Check out this new infographic from Mia MacMeekin that provides 27 tips on ways you might work with students who are not paying attention. Some of these suggestions may be new to you. Consider sharing this with teachers at your school and beyond!

"Quill is a service that provides an updated take on the old writing worksheets that most of us used in elementary school and middle school. The service offers more than just the writing practice activities, but that is its core feature."

Do your students need to practice with grammar and punctuation? Quill provides worksheets for students in Grades 1 - 8 that have spelling and grammar errors. Students have to correct the errors. Quill corrects the papers, showing students what they did correctly, or what needs to be corrected.

Create your own classroom, provide students a code to sign-in, and pick your assignments. Students work at their pace and you can view their work through the dashboard.

As Richard Byrne states in this post "Having the pre-made activities at your disposal and having the opportunity to quickly see how your students did on each activity will free up some of your time."

There is a video that explains the site in more detail, or you may go directly the the website: http://www.quill.org/

Is PowerPoint a useful teaching tool? A few days ago on the Teaching English - British Council Facebook page there was a discussion about PowerPoint - Do you love it or hate it? The discussion linked to an article by Rob Lewis who talked about ways PowerPoint could be used in class. In an earlier post he…

Thinking of doing a PowerPoint for your next classroom presentation? Check out this resource to assist you in creating a more interesting and engaging presentation that your audience will love.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.9-10.5 Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest.

Amazing Apple and Android app which allows you to take a poll from your class instantly using the camera on your device. Your students simply hold up the symbol for the multiple choice answer they wish to give. The app logs how many answered each choice, but also who chose which answer - Making assessment and feedback easy.

Verso is a new tool that come to us from teachers in Australia. It provides teachers the ability to create a 'challenge' and provide a prompt, which may be a video, document, website, etc. Add some thought provoking questions and students may answer within Verso. Students must post their own answer before they can respond to others, and all answers are anonymous.

Verso provides a number of resources to help you get started, including:

* Getting Started- This section "shows you how to Verso in 90 seconds", providing a number of examples (and you may choose one to try with your students).

* Strategies to Support Deeper Thinking - This section is very robust, and it is worth the time to check it out. They provide nine strategies to support deeper thinking, including:

- Ask for more than one type of response from your student

- Be explicit about how you want your students to respond, model an answer in your instruction

Am anxiously awaiting for a response from them; I want this tool! A cloud-based, easy to use animated video making app...drag 'n drop! Although not out yet, I have signed up for it.....more exciting than Iphone 6!!!!!

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